Pallab dot Nethttp://www.pallab.net Tue, 22 Apr 2014 18:20:22 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.323.666787.0333http://www.pallab.nethttp://www.pallab.net/wp-content/themes/true-elegance/favicon.icoNot Just Another Blogpallabhttps://feedburner.google.comThis is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.Gorgeous New PotPlayer Skinhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pallab/~3/jS5ep2LCFQs/ http://www.pallab.net/2014/04/22/gorgeous-new-potplayer-skin/#commentsTue, 22 Apr 2014 18:20:22 +0000http://www.pallab.net/?p=1999PotPlayer might not support the full-screen Metro UI mode of Windows 8; however, thanks to an enterprising skin developer you can certainly transform it into the best looking media player for Windows.

]]>PotPlayer has been my default media player for almost three years, which is an achievement considering that I love to experiment with my software choices and have played around with everything from popular options like VLC and GOM Player to the offbeat ones like Neuview Media Player and Crystal Player. But PotPlayer has cemented its place as the default video player on my system by given me little to no room for complaint.

The default PotPlayer interface isn’t exactly a work of art, and appearance is one area in which it hasn’t really improved over the years. While searching for PotPlayer skins, I stumbled upon a Microsoft Modern UI inspired skin called Metro.X, which blew me away. Here’s how my PotPlayer looks with the skin on.

The skin includes the video player, the music player, the playlist, and the control box. It comes in as many as 12 colour variations, so Windows 8 users can alter the colour scheme to match their system colour palette.

While there are multiple desktop media players with Metro UI and even more media players with a Metro inspired skin, I’m yet to come across a combination that looks as good as this skin while offering as many features at PotPlayer does. Give it a whirl, and let me know what you think.

]]>http://www.pallab.net/2014/04/22/gorgeous-new-potplayer-skin/feed/8http://www.pallab.net/2014/04/22/gorgeous-new-potplayer-skin/Fight Back Against Spam SMS Messages and Calls in Indiahttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pallab/~3/HXgCkB5NQz8/ http://www.pallab.net/2013/11/11/report-spam-sms-india/#commentsMon, 11 Nov 2013 17:27:25 +0000http://www.pallab.net/?p=1996Stop ignoring and start fighting back with India Against Spam, which helps you report spam messages and calls to TRAI.

]]>While email service providers like Google have by and large figured out how to tackle the nuisance of spam, the problem is far from solved on the mobile front. In spite of the exponential increase in the processing power and sophistication of smartphones, no one has managed to crack the problem of automatically detecting and filtering call and message SPAM. If you want respite from SPAM, your best bet is to signup for the National Do Not Call (or Do Not Disturb) registry. Adding your mobile number to the DNC/DND list is simple and hassle free. All you need to do is to call 1909 and follow the instructions. In my experience, this gets rid of over 90% of unwanted calls and messages.

Unfortunately, not every one adheres to the DND list. In spite of strict punishment prescribed by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), lots of unscrupulous telemarketers ignore the DND list. Fortunately, you can fight back against these spammers by ensuring that they’re punished. TRAI allows users to lodge complaints by forwarding the SMS to 1909 along with the phone number and date. However, manually reporting SMS and Calls in the TRAI prescribed format is too cumbersome for most users. Realizing this, Deepak Jharodia from Noida has developed an Android app to simplify the process. The app is aptly called “India Against Spam”.

India Against Spam is not particularly beautiful or elegant. However, it’s easy to use and gets the job done. The app lists all your SMS messages and recently received calls. All you have to do is select the offending entry, and the app will automatically create a report and submit it to TRAI. The number 1909 is toll free, so you won’t be charged for reporting spam SMS and calls. Once you’ve registered a report, you’d get followup messages letting you know your complaint number and the status of your complaint.

There are rumours that Aero, which had its fair share of fans as well as detractors, will be making a comeback in 2014 with the successor to Windows 8.1. However, if you can’t wait that long and want your dope of glass, there’s a quick and easy way get limited support for Aero Glass in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.

Windows 8.1 with Aero Glass Effect

Aero Glass for Windows 8 is a tiny utility that does exactly what its name suggests. It brings back glass effect in Windows 8 and Windows 8. for the classic interface. And, that’s not all! You can use the Colour Intensity slider in the Personalization section of the Windows 8 control panel to directly control the amount of transparency.

Adjust transparency from Windows 8 Control Panel

Stable release of Aero Glass is currently only available for Windows 8. However, there’s an alpha build for Windows 8.1 users. I’ve been using it for the past couple of days and haven’t faced any issues so far. Installing it is a bit tricky though. The steps I followed to install Aero Glass on Windows 8.1 are:

Installed Aero Glass for Windows 8.

Restarted into safe mode.

Replaced the DWMGlass.dll with the one present in Aero Glass for Windows 8.1 package and restarted the system once again.

Aero Glass is free and comes without any restrictions. However, it will occasionally prompt you to register. You can get rid of the pop-up by donating to the project (a minimum donation of 3€ is required for a license key).

]]>http://www.pallab.net/2013/09/11/aero-glass-windows-8/feed/0http://www.pallab.net/2013/09/11/aero-glass-windows-8/Hola! is the Quickest Way to Unlock Hulu, Facebook, YouTube and any other Websitehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pallab/~3/qCpO-2npvJ0/ http://www.pallab.net/2013/09/05/hola-unblock-hulu-facebook-youtube/#commentsThu, 05 Sep 2013 17:14:20 +0000http://www.pallab.net/?p=1973With Hola! Unblocker you can unblock Hulu, YouTube, Facebook, or any other website on your desktop, tablet, and smartphone.

There are already gazillions of tutorials on how to unblock Hulu, or view YouTube videos that might not be available in your country. Almost all of these tutorials rely on using VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). With the increasing popularity of geographically restricted webservices like Hulu, YouTube, Spotify, and Pandora, VPNs have really taken off over the past couple of years. Currently, there are several dozen VPNs wrestling it out. Unfortunately, most of the good ones require you to pay, or have some significant limitation attached to the free version. In this article, I am not going to deep dive into the various VPNs available. Instead, I’m going to share a simpler, faster way to get around censorship or geographic restrictions on your PC, tablet, or phone.

Hola! is a free browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. Unlike most other solutions, there isn’t any software to install or settings to configure. Just install it from your browser’s extension repository, and you’re good to go. When you come across a website that’s blocked in your country just click on the Hola! button in the address bar. You’ll be automatically connected to a US-based VPN and the web page will be reloaded through your newly assigned US IP address. That’s all there is to using Hola! Unblocker. It’s idiot-proof, unobtrusive, and just works. You can unblock YouTube, Facebook, Hulu or any other website that isn’t accessible in your country. The VPN is pretty fast, and I’ve not faced any buffering issues even while watching HD videos.

The Hola! button changes to a US flag once activated

Hola! works on Firefox and Chrome in Windows, Mac, and Linux. Windows users can also use the dedicated app. Android users can use Hola! by downloading the free app from the Play store. The app works on Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and newer versions. However, Gingerbread users will need to be rooted to use Hola! Unblocker. This requirement is not there for most devices running on ICS+ (Android 4.0 and newer).

Hola! Unblocker for Android tablets

Hola! also claims to speed up your surfing by securely caching all content you load through its VPN, and later serving it up to other nearby peers as they need it. However, I can’t vouch for this aspect. Frankly, I don’t care. I use Hola! mainly for watching Hulu and other similar websites, and it works like a charm. A click of the mouse and you’re good to go. If only everything in life was as simple as Hola! Unblocker.

]]>http://www.pallab.net/2013/09/05/hola-unblock-hulu-facebook-youtube/feed/2http://www.pallab.net/2013/09/05/hola-unblock-hulu-facebook-youtube/Do SSD Drives Need to be Defragmented? What Does Optimize in Windows 8 Really Do?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pallab/~3/5uR9r9TkACg/ http://www.pallab.net/2013/09/01/do-ssd-drives-defragged-windows-8-optimize-defragment-ssd/#commentsSun, 01 Sep 2013 14:55:10 +0000http://www.pallab.net/?p=1900SSD Drives differ significantly from conventional hard drives in terms of how read and write operations are performed. Do we still need to defragment SSDs? What does the "Optimize and Defragment" tool in Windows 8 do for SSD drives?

Solid State Drives are still a few years away from being mainstream, but with dropping prices they are gradually becoming more and more common. SSDs represent a significant step up from the standard rotating hard disks, and once you’ve grown used to the massive performance benefits of an SSD, you simply won’t be able to do without one. SSDs have no moving parts; hence, access and seek times are significantly lower. They can access any and multiple locations instantaneously. This in turn is responsible for blazing fast read speeds on an SSD. This is also responsible for another significant advantage of SSD – absence of fragmentation woes. SSDs are designed to read and write data from multiple logical blocks to increase performance, hence it actually encourages fragmentation.

Do SSD Drives Need to be Defragged?

So, where does that leave us with defragmentation tools? Do you need to defragment your SSD? The answer is actually both yes and no. First, let us look at what do we mean by defragmentation in the traditional sense of the term. When your system is writing a file, it often doesn’t write them into contiguous blocks on your disk. Instead, it often picks the first free block that it finds. As a result, the data often ends up being scattered across the disk. This is a big problem for hard disks as the read-write head needs to be physically positioned over the block where the data resides (seek time). Having the data scattered across the disk can have a massive impact on read performance. Traditional de-fragmentation tools re-arrange the data on your disk, so that they are packed into the smallest number of contiguous regions possible. However, as I explained above, this is a non-issue for solid state drives. SSDs don’t have any moving parts and can access any block at random. Additionally, they can also read and write data simultaneously from multiple blocks. So, in the traditional sense of the term, SSDs don’t need to be defragged. This is the reason why if you installed Windows 7 on an SSD, the defragment option would be disabled for you. However, on Windows 8, that same feature made a comeback for SSD users. What changed?

What does Optimize and Defragment Tool in Windows 8 do on SSDs?

SSDs have a couple of limitations in the way they work. SSDs are divided into blocks, each of which consists of multiple pages. Pages form the smallest logical unit in a SSD storage. In an empty SSD, you can both read and write from pages, but if your pages already have data, then write becomes a two step process – an erase followed by the actual write. Unfortunately, due to the way SSDs are designed, you must erase entire blocks at a time. This means that when you try to write data to a block that has both valid and invalid (marked for deletion) pages, the following steps need to be followed

Allocate a new block, and copy the existing valid pages to that new block.

Write the data you wanted to write to that new block.

Delete the existing block completely, and add it to the pool of empty blocks.

Obviously, it’s critical that an SSD always maintains a pool of empty blocks. In order to achieve this, the drive runs garbage collection operations in the background. It selects blocks with large number of invalidated pages (pages with data that has been marked for deletion), copies the valid pages to a fresh block, and cleans the block. Different manufacturers have different garbage collection algorithms, and the actual cleaning up of the disk itself is not controlled by the OS. The OS simply sends a TRIM hint to the SSD to indicate that a page has invalidated data and can be deleted. The SSD might choose to act on it immediately and clean-up the block, store it for later action, or discard it because it’s too busy.

SSD performance deteriorates over time due to write amplification, which itself is a manifestation of the garbage collection procedure. Head over to AnandTech for a detailed explanation.

In Windows 8, the “Optimize and defragment drive” tool adapts its behaviour depending upon the kind of storage media you are using. If an SSD is detected, it doesn’t do a typical defragmentation operation. Here’s what an officialresponse from Microsoft on the purpose of Optimize tool had to say:

In Windows 8, when the Storage Optimizer (the new defrag tool) detects that the volume is mounted on an SSD – it sends a complete set of trim hints for the entire volume again – this is done at idle time and helps to allow for SSDs that were unable to cleanup earlier – a chance to react to these hints and cleanup and optimizer for the best performance.

What Does 3rd Party Defragmentation Tools like Perfect Disk do on SSDs?

So, even though defragmentation isn’t necessary on an SSD drive, the in-built Optimize tool is still helpful in preventing gradual performance degradation of your SSD. But, where does this leave other defragmentation tool manufacturers? Why are companies like Raxco selling products like Perfect Disk, which claim to be optimized for SSDs? Are they a sham? Here’s what Perfect Disk has to say about it’s tool.

From the product video, it appears that Perfect Disk also doesn’t do a typical defragmentation on SSD drives, and essentially works in a manner similar to the in-built Optimize tool. The difference lies in the fact that Perfect Disk first tries to consolidate free space and reduce the number of partially full blocks. The free space consolidation for SSDs is different in the sense that it only tries to pack all valid data together, and doesn’t bother about having files stored in contiguous data blocks. Also, while the normal free space optimization clubs together all the free space at the end of the drive, the free space consolidation for SSDs grows the largest existing gap on the volume (wherever that may be). Raxco claims that this makes the TRIM command more effective.

This eliminates one flaw in wear leveling and trim in that partially full blocks are not trimmed. Only blocks that are verified as empty are reset by the SSD (based on block boundaries). This means that when organic writes are committed to the device, the wear leveling algorithm has more trimmed blocks to work with. This helps TRIM both restore performance, and the wear leveling algorithm extend the life of the device.

Does it really work? I’m not convinced that the pre-processing that Pefect Disk does is necessary. To me, it seems that once the OS has issued the TRIM commands to invalidate the pages, the SSD should be able to step in and clean up the block by following the process of move-delete described above. If you have an in-depth knowledge of the way an SSD works, please feel free to shed more light on this topic.

]]>http://www.pallab.net/2013/09/01/do-ssd-drives-defragged-windows-8-optimize-defragment-ssd/feed/0http://www.pallab.net/2013/09/01/do-ssd-drives-defragged-windows-8-optimize-defragment-ssd/Truecaller – How does it Work and where does it get Its Data From?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pallab/~3/5lj-BcrpB2U/ http://www.pallab.net/2013/08/27/how-truecaller-finds-numbers/#commentsTue, 27 Aug 2013 15:41:56 +0000http://www.pallab.net/?p=1859Truecaller is a caller id service that has built a massive database of phone numbers around the world. Find out how Truecaller really works, and what it its source of information.

The caller-id app Truecaller has really taken off in India with more than a million of its total twenty million users coming from the country. Last month’s embarrassing attack by the Syrian Electronic Army seems to have done little to stem its growth. And there is good reason behind that. Truecaller offers a service that can be genuinely useful. Once installed, it quietly sits in the background and jumps into action as soon as you receive a call from an unknown number. It scours through its database, and if a hit is found, it offers the location as well as the name of the caller. Knowing exactly who is calling before picking up the call can save you the trouble of wasting time on telemarketers and spammers. Truecaller also helps the fairer sex, who tend to have quite a few mystery admirers in India, to rip apart the veil of anonymity and stay one step ahead of the annoying admirers. It’s no wonder then that most users absolutely love Truecaller. However, judging from the Play Store reviews, a lot of users have no clue regarding how Truecaller gets its information.

How Does Truecaller Find Numbers?

The ugly truth behind Truecaller is that it gets all its information from its users. If your name is in the Truecaller database, it’s because at least one of your friends installed Truecaller and shared your details with the app. Truecaller is a collaborative phone directory that uploads the entire phone book of the user to its database. To be fair to Truecaller, it doesn’t exactly hide how it works. The Play store listing features the above video, which explains exactly how the app works. There is also a very prominent “How it Works” navigation link on the website, which dishes up the same video with a bit more explanation. Also, it is possible to use Truecaller without sharing your phonebook. However, the design and wording is ambiguous, and the Truecaller app doesn’t ever make it obvious to the user that it’s about to upload the entire contact list. Have a look at the screen below.

The only way to proceed seems to be by activating the Enhanced Search. There isn’t any “No” button anywhere on the screen. However, there is actually a “Maybe later” button, camouflaged with the text. The “Maybe later” button violates all design guidelines, and doesn’t look remotely like a button. The interface is purposefully designed to lure users into enabling Enhanced Search, which allows Truecaller to harvest the user’s phonebook for new numbers. The ToS page linked has this to say about Enhanced Search:

“You further agree and guarantee that, if you have opted in to participate in the Enhanced Search functionality, we may collect, use and share certain information regarding the contacts contained in Your device’s phone book (“Contact Information”) with other Users in accordance with the Truecaller Privacy Policy in order to provide the Services. By allowing Contact Information to be collected, You give Truecaller a right to use that Contact Information as a part of the Service and you guarantee that you have any and all permissions required to share such Contact Information with us.”

Unless you really want to violate the privacy of all your contacts and upload their data to Truecaller, do not enable Enhanced Search.

How to Remove Your Number from Truecaller

Truecaller has recently started a new service called Name search, which allows users to search for numbers by Name and location. While building a database for providing caller id functionality is still an acceptable motive, allowing name search pushes Truecaller past the creepy line. I would strongly recommend removing your number from Truecaller’s database by heaving over to www.truecaller.com/unlist. Putting your number on their blacklist will prevent your number from ever being listed again, irrespective of whether your friend’s choose to share their phonebooks with Truecaller or not.

]]>I went on a whirlwind trip of Sri Lanka towards the middle of April ’13 with my friends. Since vacation leaves in the Indian IT sector are rarer than a blue moon, we didn’t have the luxury of cozily soaking in the beauty and warmth of the pearl of the Indian Ocean. We had just four days, but thanks to Sri Lanka’s size, that proved to be enough to cover a beach, a national park, and a hill station. Majority of tourists to Sri Lanka are westerners; however, tourism from India is on the rise. While researching the trip I had plenty of questions, but not many answers. I started writing this soon after returning from my vacation. However, I ended up dragging my feet way more than anticipated. Anyways, here’s a Sri Lanka tourism guide from an Indian tourist’s perspective.

Preparation

Sri Lanka also doesn’t have indigenous start-ups like Cleartrip for flight and hotel booking, or Red Bus for booking bus. Even official websites such as railway.gov.lk (Sri Lankan Railway) don’t offer online booking. So, as far as travelling within the country is concerned, you will have to take care of that after landing in Sri Lanka. However, general information about Sri Lanka is available in abundance on the web. Here are some of the resources that came in really handy:i) Destinations and Activities: The best resource to identify places to visit in Sri Lanka is TripAdvisor. It’s both comprehensive and accurate with plenty of reviews to let you know what to expect.ii) General Information: Loanly Planet’s Thorn Tree forum is the best place for finding candid first hand information as well as resolving your doubts.iii) Hotel Booking: Agoda seems to be the best option for this. A couple of my hotel owners informed me that hotels in Sri Lanka are often a lot cheaper through Agoda than when booked directly, as hotel owners keep a few rooms exclusively for Agoda, which provides a steady stream of tourists.iv) Flight booking: For flight booking you chose any of the travel websites. However, keep in mind that unless there is a special discount offer, booking directly from the airline can save you the convenience fee levied by services like Cleartrip and MakeMyTrip.v) Visa: Visa is available to Indian citizens on arrival. However, it is both cheaper and more convenient to apply for a Visa online and get the ETA form from eta.gov.lk.vi) Currency: I would recommend bringing in dollars, and getting them exchanged in Colombo. One of my friends also got a Centrum travel card, which was cheaper than using international debit/credit cards to withdraw money or make payments. Before going ask your bank about the fees for using debit and credit cards internationally. I would recommend keeping them as a last option, since all banks seem to have hefty international usage fee.vii) SIM: You can easily purchase a pre-paid local SIM card at the Colombo airport. I would recommend getting an Etisalat SIM along with sufficient data to last your trip. Google Maps can come in really handy at times.viii) Transportation: Frankly, we didn’t quite figure out what’s the best way to get around in Sri Lanka during our short stay. Cabs over there seem to be on the expensive side. However, since we were pressed for time, we booked a cab for the entire duration. This saved us the trouble of haggling with cabbies at other places, and also saved time and allowed us to see more and do more. Our cab driver – M. O. G. Silva’s phone number is +94-0778015511. Sri Lankan Railways doesn’t allow online booking, but you can see train timings from railway.gov.lk. There are also regular buses between popular destinations. You can download bus time tables from here.

Colombo

We landed in Colombo at about 3 am in the morning. We had opted for a late night Spicejet flight as it was the cheapest option. Completing the formalities was quick and hassle free. We didn’t carry any INR into Sri Lanka, since Indian and Pakistani currencies are banned in the country. However, no one actually frisked us after we landed. All of us had some USD with us, and one of my friends had a Centrum traveler card. The airport had four money exchange service providers, from whom we converted just enough money to last us at least a day. We didn’t convert the full amount, since private money exchange providers offer better rates. We converted the rest of the dollars at Colombo in the morning, and got a significantly better deal (we actually converted USD to LKR at higher than the actual conversion rate). Hotels and cab drivers also accept USD, so you it’s not essential to convert your currency immediately. We also got a new SIM at the airport. Getting a local SIM in Sri Lanka is very quick and easy. I opted for Etisalat, since I had read that it had the best coverage across the country. This actually turned out to be true, since I got 3G connectivity pretty much everywhere I went. The SIM costed 200 LKR, while 2 gigs of data was priced at 500 LKR. I also got 300 minutes of talk time. Local calls were charged at 1 LKR per minute for in-network calls, and 2 LKR per minute for out of network calls. Calls to India were charged at 5 LKR per minute.

We had booked a room at Green View Hotel Katunayaka, which is far from the city, but near the airport. Reaching the hotel turned out to be more challenging and expensive that we had anticipated. Taxi is outrageously expensive in Sri Lanka, and taxi drivers seem to have the idea that all foreigners are rich and can be easily ripped off. Be careful about the cab expenses, otherwise your trip’s budget can easily go haywire. The cheapest cabbie that we could find charged us 600 LKR for a 5 km drive.

Green View hotel is located in the middle of nowhere, but the room was good, and the hotel staff were courteous. Not only were we late, but we were also greater in number than expected. Thanks to a confused soul in our party, who confirmed his availability at the very last minute, we had booked only a double bed room pretty much everywhere, hedging that we can save money by paying a little bit extra for an extra bed and accommodating the four of us in a single room. The boy who checked us in didn’t seem to mind the extra person, and readily arranged an extra bed for just $10. The room itself was spacious, cozy, and clean with a dining, kitchen and a bathroom. Everything in the hotel seemed brand spanking new. The next morning, the hotel arranged for a cab to take us around Colombo after having breakfast. The rates were more reasonable this time around. We paid 3800 LKR for about 50 km of travel in a Suzuki Swift that was technically air conditioned, but the AC was no where near powerful enough for the summer heat. The breakfast at the hotel was decent and filling, but nothing extraordinary. Every hotel in Sri Lanka seems to offer Western Breakfast; however, don’t expect muffins, bacon, or hashbrowns. All you are likely to get in a lavish Western breakfast in Sri Lanka is toasted bread with butter or jam, along with some fruits or juice.

The two tourist destinations we checked out in Colombo are Isipathanaramaya Buddhist Temple and Gangaramaya (Vihara) Buddhist Temple. The former wowed us with its enchanting idols, paintings, and sculptures, while the latter captured our attention with its interesting museum. If I was asked to rate, I would rate Isipathanaramaya as more impressive, but both are definitely worth a visit.

Isipathanaramaya Temple Photos

Gangaramaya (Vihara) Temple Photos

From here we drove to Fort Colombo, the financial district of the capital. We had our lunch at Colombo Fort Cafe, which offered a great sampling of true continental cuisine. Service was bad, and the waiters were not only inattentive but also genuinely hapless. Thankfully, the food made up for the poor service. The thought of the beef burger and Chicken Wellington still tantalises my taste buds.

Colombo World Trade Centre

Fort Cafe

Since we were on a whirlwind trip, we decided to book us a cab for four days. Danny, our current cab driver, who was both extremely friendly and helpful, arranged for a cabbie who would stay with us for the entire duration of the journey. After lunch we met our new driver M.O.G. Silva, who would take us around Sri Lanka, covering over 600 km over four days. The 38,000 LKR (about $300) he charged us might be steep by Indian standards, but didn’t seem like a bad deal after having a tryst with typical Lankan drivers. Silva was an old man with his own peculiarities. He couldn’t speak English as well as Danny, but understood the language well enough for language to not be an issue. He could even understand bits and pieces of Hindi. Initially he seemed distant and slightly arrogant, but through the trip, he became more friendly and understanding.

We started for Hikkaduwa — our next destination — well before sunset. On the way, Silva took us to a Buddhist temple. This one wasn’t as mesmerizing as the ones we saw in Colombo; however, here we were allowed to enter the heart of the temple, including the praying hall. I don’t recall the name of the temple, but here’s a picture of it. Let me know if you know which temple it is.

Unknown Buddhist Temple Between Colombo and Hikkaduwa

Hikkaduwa

We reached Hikkaduwa at about 8:30. The hotel we had booked — Di Sicuro Inn — once again turned out to be excellent. It wasn’t overlooking the beach, but it was located right at the heart of the town, with the beach being just a five minutes walk away. For Hikkaduwa, we had managed to get a triple occupancy room, and the owner didn’t complain about an extra person putting up. However, we paid $10 extra the next day, since we also wanted to checkout late by a few hours.

After a quick bath we headed out to find a place to eat. I had read a lot about No: 1 Roti Shop, and wanted to try its exotic varieties of rotis. Unfortunately, the shop was closed as April is supposed to be off-season. Since we didn’t have any other specific destination in mind, we decided to hit the beach and find a shack overlooking the waters to have dinner. We settled on Refresh, since the place was abuzz with tourists and had reasonable reviews on TripAdvisor. This turned out to be a big mistake, and possibly our biggest regret in Sri Lanka. Almost everything we ordered tasted horrible and was overpriced. The sea food platter was no where near the quality of the platter I had in Britto’s in Goa. The deviled crab tasted funny and was almost inedible, and the toasted sandwich wasn’t actually toasted. The only saving grace was the alcohol. We discovered Lion Strong Beer (8.8% alcohol), a local Sri Lankan brand that lived up to its name, and helped us generously in coming to terms with the massive waste of money that Refresh turned out to be. After spending a few hours in the beach, we resolved to be careful about where we ate henceforth, and called it a day.

The beaches in Hikkaduwa are pretty, but not stunning. The biggest draw of Hikkaduwa is its strong waves, which are well suited for surfing. The next morning, after having a quick Western Breakfast, which was consisted of poached egg, toasted bread with butter and jam, and fruit juice, we headed out to find a scuba diving center. Once again, due to the fact that we were travelling during off-season, we found that most places were closed. We settled on Barracuda diving center. Three of us were complete noobs, while one of my friends had prior diving experience in Andamans. We paid 8000 LKR each for training and beginner’s diving experience, while the aforementioned friend was charged 4000 LKR. Scuba diving was fun, adventurous. However, the water wasn’t well suited for diving. We were promised visibility of 10-12m, while in reality the visibility was probably just 2m. We did manage to spot plenty of shoals of fish, but most of the corals were bleached. Also, strangely for a PADI certified institute, we weren’t allocated one companion per person. Instead there were three instructors taking care of four of us. Moreover, one of the instructors was a giant pain in behind. The older man was rude, unfriendly, and behaved more like a strict school headmaster than a friendly diving instructor. Fortunately, the other instructors were much better, and tried to compensate for the old man’s petulance. Still, if you want to go scuba diving in Hikkaduwa, you might be better off not picking Barracuda. My friends also attempted to learn surfing. They paid 3000 LKR for a two and a half hour course; however, due to want of time, couldn’t finish the entire course.

Galle

We checked out from the hotel before 3 pm and headed towards Galle, which is a short drive from Hikkaduwa. In Galle, we stopped at Indian Hut for lunch. Food at Indian Hut was a polar opposite of Relish. It was affordable and delicious. The Chikken Tikka Massala in Indian Hut could have given any Indian restaurant a run for its money. We headed towards the Dutch Reformed Church in Galle, which is situated in a quiet little part of the town known for its Dutch architecture. The Church was built in 1750s and is still used as a place of worship. I loved walking around Church Street, which was charmingly beautiful and hauntingly peaceful. One our way back, we also stopped by for a quick look at the Galle Fort.

Pictures of Dutch Town

Picture of Galle Fort

Tissamaharama

From Galle, we drove to Tissamaharama, passing through the gorgeous beaches of Mirissa. Our hotel at Tissa was Serene Park Hotel, which is located next to the gorgeous Tissa Lake. Serene Park is situated right in the midst of a paddy field. The surrounding appeared barren and scarred in April, but will undoubtedly be more pleasing before the harvest. The rooms were once again of very good quality, considering the price. Jagath, the owner of Serene park wanted an extra $15 to accommodate the extra two members in our group, to which we happily agreed. Unlike in other places, he didn’t just fit in an extra mattress. He upgraded us to a room with two double beds. The purpose of visiting Tissamaharama was of course visiting the Yala National Park. Unfortunately for us, it was the middle of the festive season in Sri Lanka, and safari guides were seemingly all unavailable or booked. The fact that we reached Tissa well after nine in the evening made getting a guide even tougher. Jagath made a few calls, and managed to get us someone who was willing to show up the very next morning and take us to Yala. However, we had to pay 7000 LKR for the trip to Yala. We were told by Jagath that the standard rate is about 5000 LKR.

Room at Serene Park

Pictures of Tissa Lake

The Safari jeep that Jagath had booked was actually a custom-made vehicle with soft cushioned seats. If you go to Yala, make sure that you book this kind of vehicle as the roads are practically non-existant inside the national park, and travelling in an ordinary jeep will definitely not be a pleasant experience. We entered Yala at about 6 am and spent over 200 minutes inside the park in search of the elusive leopard. We weren’t lucky enough to spot a leopard, but we did get to see lots of beautiful birds, elephants, deers, crocodiles, and monkeys. Even though we missed the star attraction, I would still recommend the safari pure because of the variety of animals on display.

Animals in Yala National Park

Our Jeep for Yala National Park Safari

Serene Park offers complimentary breakfast. However, Jagath had graciously agreed to switch that for a complimentary lunch, since we had to leave for Yala at dawn. The lunch I had at Serene Park was undoubtedly my favourite meal in Sri Lanka. The main course was Milk Rice and Fish Sambol, while for dessert we had several varieties of homemade traditional sweets prepared for the New Year. Among all the hotels we put up at, the experience at Serene Park was the best. Jagath went above and beyond what you would expect from the owner of a small bed-and-breakfast joint.

Lunch Served at Serene Park

Nuwara Eliya

After having lunch, we left for Nuwara Eliya. We started early since he didn’t want to be travelling in the hilly roads at night. But, the mountain god had other plans. With still about 100 kms left for our destination, a landslide stopped us in our tracks. With no way forward, we had to turn around as I figured out a detour with the help of Google Maps. Thankfully, Etisalat had good 3G signal even in the sparsely populated hills. The detour ensured that it was already past seven when we entered the gorgeous town of Nuwara Eliya. The entire city was lit up and partying. Temporary food stalls had sprung up next to the Gregory Lake and the youth of Sri Lanka was ushering in the New Year by rocking to the beats in an open air disco. We decided to stop by and have our dinner at the food stalls, since it was unlikely that we would be able to return to the city later that night. It was here that I discovered that Maggi in Sri Lanka tastes way better than Maggi in India!

By the time we reached The View at Glenloch, our hotel, it was ten in the night. We had made a mistake in booking the hotel, as it turned out to be a good three hours drive away from Nuara Eliya. In fact, as we would discover later, our hotel was nearer to Kandy than to Horton Plains National Park, which we intended to visit the next day. Don’t book Glenloch, if you want to spend time in and around Nuara Eliya or the Horton Plains. However, it wasn’t the only mistake we made. Prosper, a US return nurse who was the owner of The View was incensed to see so many of us. Convinced that we were there to swindle him, he made oblique threats to throw us out, and went on a tortuously long rant about the Terms and Services of Agoda. Our offers to pay for an extra mattress fell on deaf ears. Finally, after about twenty minutes of ranting, when he seemed to regain control over his emotions, he offered to add an extra mattress to our room. Alas, he changed his mind even before we could let out a sigh of relief. He now offered two of us a separate room, as it hazardous to accommodate four people in a single room. The catch was that this room wasn’t actually a hotel room. It was a shabby room distinct from the main premise, and seemed to be the servant quarters. Out of option, two of us (me and my friend) agreed to spend the night at this room. While Prosper was well within his rights to do what he did (in fact he had full authority to throw us out), he was undoubtedly the least friendly and welcoming hotel owner we encountered in Sri Lanka.

The View at Glenloch

Nuwara Eliya Lake

The plan for the final day was to go trekking at Horton Plains National Park. The World’s End trail is a reasonably gentle walk of about 8 km that features three attractions – Little World’s End (a 274m cliff), World’s End (a 884m cliff), and Baker’s Falls (20m waterfall). We had been warned in advance that it’s best to reach the park as early as possibly, since the clouds descend after 10 am obscuring the view. Unfortunately, we slept through the sun rise, and reached the park a good three hours later than we had originally intended to. We missed out on the view from both of the World’s End, yet we felt that the trek was very much worth the 1800 LKR entry fee. You mileage might vary depending on where you are coming from. The Lord of the Rings like rolling meadows are present in very few places in India, and was something none of us had experienced before. However, if you are coming from Europe or Ocenia, Horton might have little new to offer you. The two and a half hours walk through the loop was the highlight of the tour for us. Here are a few of the many pictures we snapped at Horton Plains.

Pictures of Horton World’s End Trail

Kandy

After Horton Plains, it was time to head towards Colombo for our midnight flight out of Sri Lanka. On the way, we wanted to have a quick look at Kandy, which has been declared as a World Heritage site by UNESCO. Given that we had only a few hours to spend in Kandy, we decided to hit the biggest attraction – the Temple of the Tooth (Sri Dalada Maligawa). This temple is said to house the relic of the tooth of Buddha, and is considered to be among the holiest Buddhist shrines in the world. Just outside the temple is the Kandy Lake, which is fairly big, and seemed well maintained. A walk round the lake might have been a serene experience, had it not been for the damn crows. The trees surrounding the lake seemed to shelter hundreds (if not thousands) of birds, and as the sun slipped beneath the horizon, the crows decided to let it rip. For the entire duration we were there, it was literally raining shit! Kandy Lake offered a truly extraordinary experience alright, but not one you would cherish.

The Temple of the Tooth charges foreigners a 1000 LKR entry fee; however, there visitors from SAARC countries have to pay half the price. We seemed to have arrived in time for the evening prayers, and the temple was stuffed with devotees. The crowd made is almost impossible to stand at a place and peacefully observe the magnificent 16th century architecture or the wall paintings on display. If you do visit the temple, try to pick a time when it will be less crowded. We didn’t spend enough time in Kandy to judge the town, but it’s main attraction felt over commercialized and failed to have the impact that the less popular temples in Colombo had on us. We wrapped up our stay in Kandy with dinner at the Kandy Muslim Hotel, which was both cheap and delicious, and headed towards Colombo in our cab. We reached the airport about an hour before mid-night, bid adieu to Silva, and checked in for our journey back home.

Windows Task manager has come a long way since its introduction in Windows NT almost two decades ago. In its latest incarnation in Windows 8, it’s a lot more than a simple process manager. Microsoft has picked up several handy features that were previously buried inside different Windows utilities, and embedded them in the Task Manager where they will get greater visibility. Last week, I wrote about the new ‘Analyze Wait Chain‘ feature in the Windows Task Manager. This week I am going to take a closer look at the newly introduced ‘Start-up’ tab.

As the name suggests, the ‘Start-up’ tab can be used to monitor and control processes that automatically launch at boot. In previous versions of Windows, the same functionality was available in the System Configuration (MsConfig) utility. In Windows 8, the ‘Startup’ section of MsConfig utility simply opens up the Task Manager.

Windows 8 Task Manager: Startup Tab

Although the core feature was available in older versions of Windows, Microsoft has added new parameters which makes it easier to identify the biggest resource hogs. The screenshot above displays the ‘Start-up’ tab in its default state. The final column — Start-up Impact — displays how much of a slowdown each entry is likely to cause. Impact values are determined by applying these criteria:

High impact – Apps that use more than 1 second of CPU time or more than 3 MB of disk I/O at startup

Low impact – Apps that use less than 300 ms of CPU time and less than 300 KB of disk I/O

Windows 8 Task Manager: Startup Tab with Additional Columns

You can also see exactly how much CPU and disk I/O each process was using at startup by enabling the relevant columns. You can easily disable any process from the right click context menu. Microsoft also helpfully offers to search the web to find more information about processes you can’t identify. What’s surprising about the ‘Search online’ feature is that it uses the default search engine of your default browser, and not Bing on Internet Explorer, as I was expecting. Microsoft has indeed come a long way over the past few years.

Without a shade of doubt, the new startup manager is both more accessible and useful. However, to be honest, boot time is going to gradually become a non-issue for most desktop users in a few years. If you have an SSD (Solid State Drive), Windows 8 should boot up in 15 seconds or less. Unfortunately, SSDs are still prohibitively expensive for a vast majority of users, and are still a few years away from becoming mainstream.

]]>The very familiar Window Task Manager received a major overhaul in Windows 8. It has been both simplified and made more useful. The changes are beyond simple cosmetic tweaks, and there are quite a few extremely handy new options in there that are well worth exploring. I will be doing a small three-part series to highlight three little known features that can come in extremely handy. This is the first part of the series.

The first feature I am going to take a look at is something called ‘Analyze wait chain’. This option is hidden in the right click context menu of the ‘Details’ tab, which is essentially a renamed Processes tab. So exactly what does this option do? Click on the “More on wait chain” link and you will be taken to this webpage, which says, “Wait Chain Traversal (WCT) enables debuggers to diagnose application hangs and deadlocks”. The rest of the webpage isn’t exactly verbose.

Analyze Wait Chain Option in Windows 8 Task Manager

In simple words, the ‘Analyze wait chain’ feature might come in handy when an application suddenly stops responding, and you simply can’t or don’t want to use the ‘End Task’ option. An application can switch over to the dreaded ‘Not Responding’ state due to a multitude of reasons. One of the causes is that the application is simply waiting for another process to respond. In such cases, you can use the ‘Analyze wait chain’ option and Windows will list all the processes the application is waiting for. If you are lucky, then you can simply kill the listed processes and unfreeze your application. However, note that I used the word lucky. There’s no telling exactly how the frozen application will react to you killing the dependant process. It might begin responding again, it might crash, or it might continue to remain unfrozen. Its reccomend to use the ‘Analyze wait chain’ feature only when you believe that the application won’t begin responding on its own. If you don’t get the option to ‘End Task’ the frozen process, close the task manager and relaunch it with administrator priviledges. You can do so by searching for Task Manager in the Start screen, right clicking on the icon, and clicking on the ‘Run as administrator’ option.

Before I conclude, it will be disingeious to not point out that the wait chain traversal feature isn’t exactly new to Windows. This feature was also included in Windows 7; however, it was buried in the Resource Monitor. To launch Resource Monitor, press Win+R, type in ‘resmon’ and hit enter.

Way back in 2010, I had remarked that “battery life is a major issue with all Android phones”. This was written in the days of FroYo (my handset was stil on Eclair). Since then, we have seen a host of Android version updates with better battery management, improved chipsets with ingenious power saving techniques, and of course more powerful batteries. Unfortunately, in spite of all of these advances, the root problem remains. A smartphone’s battery life is no where near what one would consider ideal.

The tips I shared in my original article still hold true, and can be followed to extract some additional juice out of out battery. However, today, I will share two brilliant apps whose combined power can easily prolong your Android phone’s battery life by several hours. Using these apps I succeeded in boosting my battery life from 10.5 hours to 14 hours with moderate usage and 3G data.

1. Better Battery Stats

In my older article I recommended an app called “Spare Parts” to monitor battery usage and identify misbehaving apps. Unfortunately, if you are using Gingerbread or a newer variant of Android, Spare Parts can no longer be used on your system. Noticing this void, XDA member ‘chamonix’ stepped up to the plate, and developed his own app called Better Battery Stats.

BBS shows an detailed log of your battery usage that can be helpful in identifying resource hogs. The most crucial bit that you should monitor carefully is the ‘Kernel Wakelock’ section. A kernel wakelock often occurs due to buggy apps, and it prevents your phone from entering sleeping state. While wakelocks are commonly employed by apps to sync data in the background, constant wakelocks can be a massive drain on the battery. Better Battery Stats is a paid app in the Play Store, but can be downloaded for free from the XDA forums.

P.S. If you find BBS to be too confusing, you can use Battery Stats Plus, which offers less detailed metrics, but automatically highlights misbehaving apps.

2. Deep Sleep Battery Saver

One of the best ways to prolong your battery life is to disable data transfer. A slightly more moderate option is to disable automatic sync. A bunch of apps trying to pull data every few minutes, can drain your battery in a matter of hours. However, disabling either data or automatic sync defeats the purpose of buying a smartphone.

Deep Sleep Battery Saver offers a workable compromise, while massively boosting your battery life. DS Battery Saver automatically disables background data and Wi-Fi, pauses all apps, and puts your phone to deep sleep when the screen is off. However, it periodically re-enables your data and Wi-Fi connections and wakes up apps to allow them to sync. The free version comes with five different presets and offers some degree of customizability. The Pro version however allows you to completely create your own profile with day and night settings, define apps to ignore and more. For most users, the free version should suffice.

I have been using this app for past few months, and it boosts my battery life by 25% even on the gentle settings. I can not recommend this app enough. In my book, this is the best Android battery saver app. It’s simple and idiot proof, and works exceedingly well. Just two taps and you are good to go. However, if you want more bells and whistles and settings to play with, you might want to take a look at 2x Battery. I haven’t tested it, but the reviews seem quite positive.

3. Battery Calibration

No. I am not going to recommend a battery calibration app. I am going to stick to my promise of just listing just two apps today. However, a battery calibration app is something that is often included in lists with a similar theme. If you go by the reviews on the Play store and elsewhere, they can easily add hours to your battery life. Unfortunately, it’s all a myth. Battery calibration apps don’t work and pretty much all the positive reviews on the Play store are due to placebo effect. Even respectable publications like Android Police have been taken for a ride. Here’s what Google employee Dianne Hackborn has to say:

This file (batterystats.bin – the system file that battery calibration apps cleanup) is used to maintain, across reboots, low-level data about the kinds of operations the device and your apps are doing between battery changes. That is, it is solely used to compute the blame for battery usage shown in the “Battery Use” UI in settings.

That is, it has deeply significant things like “app X held a wake lock for 2 minutes” and “the screen was on at 60% brightness for 10 minutes.”

]]>http://www.pallab.net/2013/02/22/android-battery-saver-apps/feed/1http://www.pallab.net/2013/02/22/android-battery-saver-apps/Olivea Travels – Scamming Redefinedhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pallab/~3/1-N3dvLocTo/ http://www.pallab.net/2013/02/20/olivea-travels-scam-review/#commentsTue, 19 Feb 2013 19:22:16 +0000http://www.pallab.net/?p=1782Olivea Travels promises the sky, but fails to deliver even on the most basic aspects. I recount how I was scammed by Olivea Travels.

How does the idea of experiencing the comfort and care of air travel at the value for money of a bus journey sound to you? Pretty appealing, right? That’s exactly what ‘Olivea – Travel Redefined’ promises. Olivea promises luxurious interiors designed by D.C (Dilip Chhabria), personal entertainment system with Dish T.V. connection, on-board Wi-Fi, business class recliner seats, three course meals, on-board toilets, bus stewards, and more. Olivea might well be among the most premium bus services in the continent. Unfortunately, I will never know, because I am never travelling by Olivea. Olivea buses aren’t cheap, but they are a fair bit cheaper than regular air fair. However, compared to other bus services, you will still be paying a premium. When you charge your customers a premium, and portray yourself as a luxury brand, providing brilliant customer service is pivotal. However, it seems that no one told this to Olivea.

On the record, my tale begins on the 25th of June, 2012. However, my first interaction with Olivea was a week earlier. After reading about Olivea, I wanted to book a seat for my girlfriend who was coming to town. But, before booking the seats, I wanted to ensure that the boarding and drop-off points were convenient enough. I tried calling their Hyderabad number, and no one picked up the call. Tried their national toll free number, and the same experience. I tried calling their Bangalore number, it refused to connect! Frustrated, I posted my question on their Facebook page. I received a standard boilerplate reply that simply pointed me to the numbers I had already tried, instead of answering my query. I should have given up by now, but I tried again after a few days. This time someone responded on the Hyderabad number, and I was able to get my answer. On the 25th of June, I booked a seat for 1st of July Bang-Hyd journey.

A mere two days before the journey, Olivea called up my GF to inform that the trip I had book was invalid. She was informed that it never existed, and was shown on the internet booking portal by mistake! The Olivea representative promised a refund within 10 days. I have never heard any other travel company allowing bookings for non-existent trips. The situation was already beyond ridiculous; however, it turned from being ridiculous to bang-your-head-on-the-desk frustrating over the new few months.

Olivea’s promised refund never arrived. I followed-up with a reminder mail inquiring about the status of the refund on the 12th of July. No one bothered to reply. After waiting another week, my GF called Olivea and was asked to resubmit the booking details. So, she did. This time, we were asked to wait fourteen days for the refund to be processed. Of course, nothing changed in those two weeks. We followed up again, and were again directed by Olivea support to redo the entire process, beginning with emailing booking details. And again, nothing happened. The last email that I have on record from Olivea was on September 25, exactly three months after the booking date. I have long since given up on the refund, since neither of us had the time or energy to chase down a bunch of scammers over one bus ticket.

A trip I booked turned out to be invalid due to Olivea’s negligence, the auto-refund I promised never materialized, Olivea’s customer support kept going in circles, and all refund requests vanished into some mysterious abyss. That’s the summary of my Olivea Travels review. Olivea’s ill-trained, confused, and thoroughly clueless customer support can give the staterun BSNL a run for its money. Olivea promises the sky, but fails on even the most basic aspects. I am publishing this as a cautionary tale for others. It’s still patently obvious that Olivea hasn’t mended its ways. The website still looks like an amateur effort with links that can’t be clicked and files that can’t be downloaded. A quick search on Google for Olivea Travels reviews throw up similar tales where passengers have been duped and tricked by Olivea. Irfan recounted an experience similar to mine on Mouthshut, where he was also told by Olivea that the timings shown on the website are incorrect and the trip he had booked didn’t exist. Several others have reported stinky buses, with creeking seats, dirty blankets, cold food, and non-functioning entertainment systems. A quick look at their Facebook page still throws up numerous complaints about non-functioning or non-responsive numbers and faulty online booking. And in typical Olivea style, all Facebook queries are unanswered. It’s obvious that Olivea has learned little, and is continuing to to scam, fool, and trick customers in the guise of redefining travel.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the recently concluded EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation giveaway. As always, I used random.org to pick the winners. Here are the ten people who received their EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation licenses (worth $39 each) earlier this week.

Alex myimmortalize david John d rch berni42 Amol Nikhil Verma ale Grr

Congratulations to all the winners. If you didn’t win this time, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to the our newsletter to stay informed on future giveaways.

]]>http://www.pallab.net/2011/10/22/easeus-todo-backup-workstation-giveaway-winners/feed/1http://www.pallab.net/2011/10/22/easeus-todo-backup-workstation-giveaway-winners/Top 12 Cheap Android Tablets Available in Indiahttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pallab/~3/gtK7ZKP8St8/ http://www.pallab.net/2011/09/13/cheap-android-tablet-india/#commentsTue, 13 Sep 2011 05:56:31 +0000http://www.pallab.net/?p=1754A quick look at some of the best Android tablets available in India for less than Rs. 15,000.

Tablets are quite the rage these days, and almost every manufacturer worth its salt already has jumped into this segment. Apple’s iPad is still unbeatable as far as quality is concerned. However, quality doesn’t come cheap, and not everyone can afford to spend thirty thousand bucks on a tablet. The good news is that there are quite a few cheaper alternatives available. Almost all the budget tablets use Android, and offer a fairly decent bang for the buck. Here are the best budget Android tablets available in India.

12. C2K

A cheap Android tablet can’t be expected to compete with the likes of iPad 2, Galaxy Tab, Xoom, or Adam. If you want a top of the line tablet experience, be prepared to spend more than Rs. 25,000. However, if your requirements are not very demanding, you should be able to get a tablet that satisfies your needs for less than Rs. 15,000. While purchasing a budget tablet pay attention to its specifications. For example, capacitive touch alone can make a world of difference as far as usability is concerned. Also, if your system doesn’t have enough CPU power or RAM, be prepared for a frustratingly laggy experience. Having a newer version of Android also helps. Although, Honeycomb is the tablet optimised version of Android, none of the budget tablets feature it as Google has shared its source code with only few selected partners. Gingerbread is as good as it gets in the budget tablet segment.

The HeroTab offers unbelievable bang for the buck, but support will probably be a big issue with it. If you want peace of mind, the 3G Tab introduced by Reliance, as well as iBall Slide are better options. However, the Reliance 3G Tab will cost you almost twice as much as the HeroTab, once you consider the data charges.

]]> Scroll down to win one of the ten licenses of EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation (worth $39 each) that I am giving away.

Cloud based backup solutions are quite the rage these days. In the past, I have reviewed quite a few cloud backup solutions including Carbonite, Syncplicity and Mozy. Using a cloud backup solution allows you to access your data from anywhere and everywhere without having to worry about keeping your backup disk secure. All of you have to do is, install the client, and create a few rules. Everything else is normally taken care of by the client. However, cloud backup becomes untenable if the quantity of data you are dealing with is huge. Unless you are one of the privileged few with a massively fast internet connection, restoring large bulks of data can be time consuming. Even more importantly, in order to be able to take advantage of cloud backup solutions, you have to be willing to trust third parties with your confidential data. The final disadvantage of cloud backup solutions is that they only backup data. System state or applications can’t be backed up using any of these solutions.

EaseUS is a fairly well-known name thanks to its suite of data backup, recovery, and management utilities. If you believe that the cloud based backup solutions are not a good fit for you, then EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation is what you should take a look at.

EaseUS Todo Backup features two primary backup modes:

System Backup: As the name suggests, this mode will create a snapshot of your system including the operating system state and installed applications. This is somewhat similar to Windows’ inbuilt system restore feature, and can help in recovering from crashes and malware infections. One particularly interesting and impressive feature is Universal Restore. Typically system snapshots are hardware dependent since they also include hardware driver backups. However, EaseUS has a “Recover to dissimilar hardware” mode, which can restore system snapshot to an entirely different system. You will be able to manually specify the hardware drivers for the system if they are not present in the snapshot.

File Backup: This is probably the mode that you will be using most often. You can create well defined backup plans to automatically backup changes made to files residing in specific partitions or folders. This is similar to the functionality that cloud backup solutions offer.

There is also an additional Clone Disk mode, which backs up the system state, applications, and all files present on the disk.

File backups are of three types:

Full backup: The entire content of the file is backed up. In order words, a copy of the file is created.

Incremental backup: This essentially implements versioning by backing up and maintaining different versions of the file. The obvious benefit is that less storage space is utilized, as only a full backup of the initial state is stored along with the subsequent changes. However, restoring an incremental backup takes more time as “the first full backup and every incremental backup must be restored”.

Differential backup: This takes a middle ground to balance space consumption and recovery speed. The change file maintains a record of all changes made with respect to the first full backup file. Thus, while restoring only the full backup and the selected differential backup file needs to be restored.

It is possible to backup files to both a local disk location and a remote server (through FTP). There are several other power user features in EaseUS like:

Conversion of backup images into VmWare of Virtual PC compatible images. Support for direct mounting an image to explore and copy files present in it. Comprehensive backup triggering rules based on date, time, and events. A pre-OS recovery mode that can kick in before Windows is loaded. WinPE based bootable recovery disk, which can be utilized to restore system in case of a Windows crash.

EaseUS Todo Backup is an incredibly sophisticated and polished backup solution that should be offers a complete solution for home and business users. In spite of being feature packed and powerful, Todo Backup is fairly simple to use thanks to its well thought out interface. Using a desktop based solution generally requires a larger investment than cloud based alternatives. However, they have their own advantages that I have already discussed. If a desktop based backup solution is what you are looking for, go ahead and take EaseUS for a spin. It’s one of the best in its class. A free version of Todo Backup is also available, which offers all the features discussed above other than System snapshot and built-in Windows PE bootable disk.

EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation License Giveaway

EaseUS is sponsoring ten licenses worth $390 (each license is worth $39). Needless to say your odds of winning are extremely good since we are giving away as many as ten licenses.Comment on this post. Make sure you use a valid e-mail address. (compulsory)Follow@indyan and retweetthis message to get a bonus entry into the lucky draw. You must post the status update URL in the comments section to be considered. (optional)Subscribe to my e-mail newsletter to get a bonus entry into the lucky draw. After subscribing, you must let me know by leaving a comment. (optional) You can also blog (post in a forum) about this contest to get 2 additional entries. Once again, you must leave a comment with the URL of the blogpost. Please don’t spam, or violate rules of the board to promote the contest.

In spite of what its detractors might have to say, each Android phone is a different beast with a different set of hardware and software capabilities. Unlike Microsoft and Apple, Google doesn’t impose restrictions on the hardware. This has allowed manufacturers to release Android handsets for almost all segments. It’s now possible to purchase an Android handset for as little as six or seven thousand rupees. The plethora of available choices mean that its not always easy to make the right decision. In this post I will try to highlight the best Android handsets currently available in India, in various price ranges.

Low End: Less than Rs. 10,000

There are a surprising number of options in this category. As you might expect, all of them have just enough hardware muscle to be able to run Android. Don’t expect fancy stuff from handsets belonging to this range. If you want to play games on your Android handset look somewhere else. The combination of poor chipset and low resolution means that most games won’t even run on these handsets.

Many of the offerings in this segment are from lesser known names. My advice would be to not fall for them, since longevity is something I have always found to be lacking in lesser known brands. My recommendation for this segment is LG Optimus One P500, which is now available for just under ten thousand bucks. The Samsung Galaxy Fit S5670, which is similarly priced, is also worth a look. It has a bigger screen and better colour depth, but a lower resolution. The Fit also edges out the Optimus One with its camera, but the Optimus has more internal memory and a meatier battery. Both these phones are expected to receive Gingerbread soon.

Lower Mid Range: Less than Rs. 15,000

Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 has been setting the Indian market on fire, and for good reason. It offers an attractive blend of features and affordability. Ace might not have the chops to record HD videos or run high resolution games, but it does have enough to be able to offer a satisfying Android experience. The Ace retails for Rs. 14,000.

Upper Mid Range: Less than Rs. 20,000

Samsung won a million hearts with its Galaxy S flagship device. Now, it has tweaked the Galaxy S slightly and released it as Galaxy SL. Samsung Galaxy SL I9003 has a slightly weaker processor, slightly inferior screen (Super-LCD instead of SAMOLED), and reduced internal storage. The Galaxy SL is available for Rs 18,500.

High End: Less than Rs. 25,000

At this stage you will be pampered for choice. There is the mighty Samsung Galaxy S i9000 itself. Then there is Google’s Nexus S, which is again a modified version of the Galaxy S. The Nexus S doesn’t support expandable memory; however, it has the advantage of being the first to receive Android updates, since its a Google Experience device. HTC Desire S and Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo are also options worth considering. However, according to reports, the HTC Desire S suffers from a Wi-Fi death-grip problem.

For this category, I won’t be recommending any single handset, since I believe that there isn’t enough separating these devices to give a clear cut verdict. If you want a handset with a good camera pick the Xperia Neo, which has an 8 megapixel camera with Exmor R sensor for enhanced visibility in darkness. It is capable of 720p video with continuous autofocus. Pick the Nexus S if quick updates and customisability matter to you. Xperia Neo is available for Rs. 23,500, and the Nexus S normally costs Rs. 22,000. However, FlipKart is currently offering it for only Rs. 19,999. I don’t know if this is a temporary offer or a permanent price; however, the Nexus S is simply a steal at that price.

Ultra High End: Price No Bar

The most powerful smart phone in the market is the Samsung Galaxy S II i9100. It’s a true super phone, which is handsomely ahead of its competition. However, there is one cause for concern with this awesome device. The Indian version ships with Exynos processor, and not Tegra 2. While Exynos is an extremely powerful chip, due to artificial hardware fragmentation, many high end games don’t run on it.

If gaming is important to you, then you should also take a look at Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY. This PlayStation branded handset comes with hardware keys (PlayStation buttons), which provides a superior gameplay experience. Moreover, Sony has roped in some of the most influential mobile game publishers to create dozens of Xperia Play exclusive games.

Another handset in this price range that is worth taking a gander at is the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. It doesn’t have the raw power of Samsung Galaxy S II, or the usp of the Play; however, it exudes a sense of style and beauty. If you are willing to sacrifice horsepower to make a style statement, pick up the Arc.

The Arc is currently retailing for around Rs. 27,000, while the Galaxy S II and the Xperia Play are demanding close to Rs. 30,000.